As a pastor I’m called to do two things well. First, faithfully preach the whole counsel of God’s Word. Second, devote myself to prayer. About 95% of my pastoral time and energies go towards that first one. The second one…well, I stink at it.
What Brian Croft says here is so true:
Prayer may sit on your conscience, but it isn’t complaining. It remains on the list of tasks for the day, but those who are not prayed for are unaware that they are forgotten. As other demands steal our attention, prayer gets pushed to the background. Many pastors, myself included, will go week after week until eventually that soft but necessary voice calling us to stop and pray just fades out. If enough time passes, the voice of conviction and desire will go away. When that happens, prayer gets squeezed out of our life.
What I’m coming to realize is that if I don’t schedule it then it isn’t going to happen. If I don’t develop a plan for praying for our people then it will just slip through the cracks. It will be pushed off and saved for another day while the squeaky wheels get oiled. But this is ministry neglect and this must change. So here is my plan.
Step One: Gather a list of all our active members. (I’ll extend beyond this later)
Step Two: Schedule each member into Todoist. One family/member per day.
Step Three: Pray through these New Testament prayers where applicable.
Step Four: When appropriate message/email/send a card to those who I’ve prayed for to let them know what I am praying for them.
Will you prayer for me that the Lord would give me great perseverance as I try to grow in this area of ministry?
What do you do to be intentional about praying for people?
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Image source: here
I have a 4 day, 4 week (so the 16 days each month that I’m in my office, not including Sundays) calendar with all the active and semi-active church families. Each morning I pray for 4 or 5 family units (which includes individuals in the case of singles or widows). In a month I’ve prayed for all my church families.
Then I send out a hand written card every other month. I split my list in half so it’s half the families one month, the other half the next. Each household gets 5 cards a year (Nov/Dec I do Christmas cards instead). In the note, I let them know I prayed for them, what date, ask for requests, provide a response card they can place in the offering plate, and encourage them with a bible verse.
I do this with about 100-110 people across 70ish household units. If I had 200 people, I might do the cards quarterly or twice a year or something.
The PrayerMate App is excellent to organize your prayer life, especially is your list is long. It works on Iphone and Android. A desktop version is in the works. (Tim Challies recommends it too.)